Pulling Arrows
by Rugiku
Summary: Pulling arrows is like pulling teeth. Crooked, painful to remove, yet the pain eventually numbs away. Chapter Two: Story time for a sleepless child. He'll be safe... right? Other-legend-centric drabble series, AU.
1. Shooting The Breeze

Pulling Arrows

**Dipping into the vague here in the RotG fandom. Won't have much plot but will concern some other myths and legends. Please read and review. **

* * *

The first time that Cupid wakes in his new immortal body, there's a tiny tingling in a space in his mind. It's like having a mosquito buzz around his ear but /inside/ his head and he can't get rid of it. There are faint inklings of a cherubic face and the most beautiful green eyes he's ever seen but never known, and he's sure he's supposed to be in something more flowing than bear skins and iron buckles. There's a massive bow on his shoulder and the weight of it drags down his shoulders as if there's a million futures of happiness or sadness loaded in it.

There is a roar and Cupid turns just in time to see two huge men in leather skins and fur and pointy helmets charging at each other full tilt, hefting weapons as big as he was. He ducks and the bulk of one man tears through his body as if he were nothing but smoke. The impact tears through his soul, leaving the taste of ash, terror and hellfire in his mouth and Cupid decides that he doesn't like this experience so starts running through the fields of dying Vikings and flaming boats, away.

He's only managed to figure out the parameters of his job for a few weeks when he sees her.

Red hair brighter than the sun and green eyes the colour of the grass that her flock of sheep graze upon. She's finer boned than any other girl in her village and her people call it a shame since she's too small to be bred any earlier than the tender thirteen years she's had on this tender Earth.

Young and stupid, he shoots her and seals both their fates.

A boorish youth, nineteen years of age happens to be the aim of this girl's affection. Cupid learns too late that she can't see him like the children can in the village.

The girl falls head over heels in love, and her flowers are plucked and crushed by his huge hands, dark and bloody around her thin neck.

Cupid then learns the sting of his arrows.

* * *

Cupid awakes for the first time as a woman - a wizened old crone and she's swathed in heavy silks that smell heavily of lead and poppies. Her face is covered in white gunk and her lips painted with foul slime, wiry grey hair twisted painfully up into pins and bobbins and decorated with fruit, flowers and garnets. Before her is a young scruffy man, kneeling before her, forehead pressed into the wooden timbers and his long, dark hair pools in puddles around his shoulders.

The young man looks up and realises with a shout, that she's actually /there/. Cupid blinks and finds it strange how one man can see her now, realising that the old ringing in her head is gone. He speaks in a stilted way and once he realises she can't quite understand what he says, punctuates his sentences with flamboyant gestures that make her face paint crack with mirth. She nods belligerently and let's him direct her to a small alcove of bamboo in a garden that makes her companion look sorely misplaced.

Pointing through a gap in the thin leaves, he presents to her a beautiful young maiden. Her flesh is white and her garments a deep red threaded with gold. Her hair is pinned up with gold rods laden with jewels and her eyes are lined with dark powder.

Cupid doesn't have her arrows this time but she has something deadlier - alchemy.

So she gives him a love potion that she's poured a good pint of her blood and a strip of her flesh into, and their love blooms happily though secretly.

Then she hears about a revolution. The dynasty is turning over and old wounds are crawling out into the open to take their pound of flesh from the world. Fire is everywhere and Cupid is arrested and brought before the new emperor.

Hair unkempt as a barn boy's, she recognises the man and woman gutted and drained before her on the steps, hands frozen in the death grip of love. The jealous emperor raises his hand and the beating begins.

Cupid will never forget the pain of mistakes.

* * *

The next time Cupid wakes, she's dressed in rags with a dirty bonnet on her unkept brown hair and she realises she's cold - colder than she's ever known.

There are paupers and crones (just as she was), scruffy gents and whores around her, each one of them feeling the bite in their bones and bellies as the coldest winter in the history of the empire settles around the narrow and wet streets as the rich dine in their mansions and travel the city in their horse drawn carriages.

There is an arrowhead in her hand when she starts awake at the close of the year and she quickly scurries off into the darkness to find shelter.

Cupid quickly realises that no one can see her again - the infernal ringing is back - and that as she is now, the cold has a very hard time of killing her.

That does not stop her from doing her job.

In the damp docks where creaking, groaning galleys frosted over, she does her job. She helps those looking for the money and those looking for the affection. But love is not all one needs. There are stirrings and mumblings of a better time, a better place. Revolution is set to rule again.

Finally, her love turns sour and Cupid knows it's her fault, just like every other time.

Unrest tears her frail love apart like cheap lace poked full of holes and she stares at the arrowhead as bullets whizz around and through her.

Both sides of the battle have the biggest shock of their lives when a woman who they never saw enter the battlefield is shot full of holes, dead from an arrowhead in her throat. They immediately call for a truce and stare down at the corpse.

Cupid remembers the steady death of her bestowed love.

* * *

Cupid wakes again and the world is louder, dirtier and more cacophonous than ever before. This time he's got a simple sweater on and grey slacks. Shoes adorn his feet and it takes a while to adjust to the sensation of walking on grass, yet not feeling the wet stalks between his toes. He takes a short flight around and lands on a squarish green and unhooks the bow from his back, staring at it, melancholic.

The cities are bigger and taller than the last time and the people look sterner and more guarded than ever before. There was some sort of commotion at the austere looking building that reminded him of an old chapel. A man was walking by as other around his age tittered and spoke hushed words from behind palms.

Shrugging, Cupid pulls back and let's fly, the arrow striking true and at that moment, the man claps eyes upon a blonde woman, dressed casually and not looking at all as ostentatious as the students surrounding her.

Slightly apprehensive at his work, Cupid flies off and leaves a future princess with her to-be husband.

He spends a few weeks doing his job and the time flies by. He then notices one day that his first pairing in this body have been reoccurrences on things people call televisions. Cupid smiles, hoping that for once perhaps, his matchmaking will work.

And it does because there's chatter amongst the masses that the blonde woman is such a beautiful and gracious woman, and she deserves every bit of her newfound royalty.

Then the world is thrown back into despair and breaks Cupid for what he hopes is the last time.

He understands his despicable role now.

* * *

Jack Frost sees Cupid for the first time and he sees a tortured soul, where his existence has only brought suffering and yet, he still continues on with his sordid task. Cupid flashes the spirit a debonair smile that's thinner than a spider's thread and flies off on stubby, stupid wings that his so-called believers and 21st century pop culture has forced him into. Jack knows that defeated slump in his shoulders, as if he can't bear to be alive any more, his own curse is being drowned in myth and legend that have done nothing more than prolong his existence.

Jack blinks sullenly after the spirit of infatuation and let's the wind toss him through the air again, knowing that in a few weeks, month, years or decades, Cupid's face will have changed again.

And the cycle of immortality continues.


	2. Spite

Pulling Arrows

**More late-night inspiration.**

* * *

Let me tell you a story, kid.

No, I'm not here to scare you like I'm supposed to, so you can stop the quivering. I've told this to Jack once too and he's still around so don't worry.

Anyway, this is a story about my father and his brother.

They were close, as close as brothers can get.

* * *

Their names were **Thanatos** and _Hypnos_.

Both of them were gentle and loving, each to their own.

* * *

**Thanatos** shepherded the dead.

_Hypnos _tended to the living.

* * *

They were kind and harmless, they did not hurt others.

At least, not yet.

* * *

Then the Moon and the Sun disagreed, and then humans - our lifeblood - were forever taken for the light.

ooo

_Hypnos_ was gentle still, carefully sending humans to a quiet sleep.

Even now, he still lives, but not in the way you may be thinking.

ooo

**Thanatos**, however had tried to help the Moon, arguing that humans shouldn't be on only one side of Time.

Then, the Sun punished the night-dwellers out of spite.

ooo

Out of spite, the Sun taught the humans that the Moon was:

Cold.

Unreachable.

Uncaring.

Aloof.

Out of spite, the Sun taught the humans that **Thanatos** was:

Evil.

Fearsome.

Ugly.

Cruel.

Out of spite, the Sun taught the humans that _Hypnos_ was:

Lazy.

Unknown.

Unsafe.

Dangerous.

* * *

And so, the humans made it thus.

* * *

The humans forgot:

They were born from darkness.

They will return to darkness.

They visit darkness every night.

But the darkness is not bad.

* * *

However.

Spite is.

* * *

So sleep.

Thanatos and Hypnos have long since faded from belief.

Hypnos' offspring patrols the night.

Thanatos' offspring guards you from under your bed.

They will not hurt you.

* * *

What's that?

Comas?

I'm not certain. You'll have to ask someone else. He'll be by in an hour or so.

...

Accidents? Kidnaps? Missing people?

Well, you'll have to ask my father yourself.

But he's not around anymore.

.

.

.

Right?


End file.
